Plains Humanities Alliance: Great Books of the Great Plains

Search Results

Your search returned 99 entries:

Albert, Carl, with Danney Goble.
Little Giant: The Life and Times of Speaker Carl Albert.
Published: Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1990.
Carl Albert served Oklahoma's Third District in the United States Congress for three decades. As its forty-sixth Speaker, he also guided the House of Representatives through the Watergate crisis, while also engineering a long-overdue reworking of the Congress, itself. This is his version of the story that took an Oklahoma boy from the cotton patch to the highest pinnacles of power.

Genre: Nonfiction - Diary/Memoir/Autobiography
Subject: History, Politics
Purchase online from publisher.

Askew, Rilla. Foreword by Babb, Sanora.
Fire in Beulah.
Published: New York: Viking, 2001
Written from multiple perspectives, Fire in Beulah interweaves the stories of many characters who differ in race, class, gender, and status but who share the one quality that gives this novel both its historical setting and its narrative power: the combustion of greed and racism that ignited Tulsa's infamous race war of 1921.

Genre: Fiction - Historical Fiction
Subject: African American, Urban Life

Lawrence R. Rodgers
Whose Names are Unknown: A Novel.
Published: Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2004.
Born in Oklahoma Territory in 1907 and raised on its high plains, Sanora Babb was one of the tens of thousands who fled to California in the 1930s. In this quite personalized novel, she relates as fiction real experiences that she knew only too well.

Genre: Fiction - Historical Fiction
Subject: Rural Life, European American
Purchase online from publisher.

Baird, W. David and Danney Goble.
The Story of Oklahoma.
Published: Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1994.
Although originally produced for use as a textbook in ninth-grade courses in Oklahoma history, many consider this book the best overview of Oklahoma's history for general readers as well. If so, the reason may lie in its title: this is history told as stories rather than as old facts set down in a textbook.

Genre: Nonfiction - Monograph
Subject: History

Baker, T. Lindsay and Julie P. Baker.
The WPA Oklahoma Slave Narratives.
Published: Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1996.
Although a few of the oral histories that the Works Progress Administration recorded with elderly ex-slaves living in Oklahoma can be found in previously published collections, the great bulk of those known to have been taken were thought to have been lost. Discovered by the Bakers, these presumed lost accounts fill more than 500 printed pages to provide incomparable testimonies from hundreds of slavery's witnesses and victims.

Genre: Nonfiction - Oral History
Subject: History, African American
Purchase online from publisher.

Beard, Darleen Bailey
The Flim-Flam Man.
Published: New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1998.
The year is 1950; the setting is Wetumka, Oklahoma; and the triggering event is the arrival of a slick-dressed, swift-talking con man. Even though he proceeds to swindle almost everyone in town, he inadvertently enriches the lives of two young girls. Theirs is the tale told here.

Genre: Fiction and Literature - Novel
Subject: Rural Life

Billington, Monroe Lee
Thomas P. Gore: The Blind Senator from Oklahoma.
Published: University Press of Kansas, 1967.
In 1907, T. P. Gore became one of Oklahoma's original United States senators but seemingly ended his political career in 1918 over his opposition to President Wilson. A dozen years and one Great Depression later, Oklahomans returned him to the senate - and Gore returned to his independent ways, this time in opposition to Franklin Roosevelt. This straight-forward account focuses on Gore's public life, but it captures, too, something of the contentious personality, which seems to have been passed down to the senator's favorite grandson and namesake, novelist Gore Vidal.

Genre: Nonfiction - Biography
Subject: History, Politics

Bittle, William E. and Gilbert Geis.
The Longest Way Home: Chief Alfred C. Sam's Back-to-Africa Movement.
Published: Detroit: Wayne State University Press 1964.
Described by some as a deluded deadbeat and others as a conniving fraud, Chief Alfred Sam chanced across the right audience at the right time - black Oklahomans, in 1914. Seeing in Chief Sam their heaven-sent deliverer who would return them to the promised land - Africa, hundreds of black Oklahomans became his followers and his victims.

Genre: Nonfiction - Monograph
Subject: History, African American

Blackburn, Bob L.
Images of Oklahoma: A Pictorial History with Text.
Published: Oklahoma City: Oklahoma Historical Society, 1984.
First produced as part of a multifaceted study of Oklahoma and its many diverse peoples, this is easily the finest collection of historic photos available for Oklahoma. The book's worth is made greater still by a beautiful sepia-toned printing, a strong and compelling narrative, and an organizational scheme imaginative enough to include a compelling section of children's photographs.

Genre: Nonfiction - Monograph
Subject: History, Photography

Bryant, Keith L, Jr.
Alfalfa Bill Murray.
Published: Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1968.
Probably every historian of Oklahoma would identify William Henry David Murray as the early state's most significant public figure. Chairman of Oklahoma's constitutional convention, Speaker of its first house of representatives, a United States congressman, and Depression-era governor, Murray invariably tried to shape public affairs in ways befitting this semi-educated rustic who proudly bore the title Alfalfa Bill.

Genre: Nonfiction - Biography
Subject: History, Politics

Butler, Cleora
Cleora's Kitchens: The Memoir of a Cook and Eight Decades of Great American Food.
Published: Tulsa: Council Oak Books, 1985.
Born in Muskogee in 1901, Cleora Butler relocated to Tulsa, where she entered one of the few professions open to a twenty-two year-old black woman - domestic service, particularly as a cook, to what became a series of prominent Tulsa oilmen. Part memoir of a life well-lived, part instructions for dishes well-prepared, this remarkable book also won national awards for design and graphic production.

Genre: Nonfiction - Diary/Memoir/Autobiography
Subject: African American, Folklife - Cuisine

Carter, Forrest
The Education of Little Tree.
Published: New York: Delacorte Press, 1976.
This book gained dubious fame when its later reissue led journalists to look into what had been presented as the folksy memoir of a rough but loving Cherokee upbringing. It turned out that the book was pure fiction, written by a gifted pensman formerly known as Asa Carter. By then dead, he had always been known before as Forrest Carter ‑ known, too, for any number of sometimes-verbal, sometimes-physical racist outrages. Its teller aside, the tale itself is a very moving and all too convincing yarn.

Genre: Fiction and Literature - Novel
Subject: Native American

Clark, Marian. Introduction by Michael Wallis.
The Route 66 Cookbook. Tulsa:
Published: Council Oak Books, 1993.
Here we have what the author describes as "over 250 time-tested recipes from places like . . . the Pig Hip Restaurant, . . . Miz Zip's Café, . . . and the Yippie Yi Yo Café." What more needs be said?

Genre: Nonfiction - Reference
Subject: Folklife - Cuisine, Travel

Conley, Robert J.
Mountain Windsong: A Novel of the Trail of Tears.
Published: Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1995.
Both an accomplished author and member of the Keetoowah band of Cherokees, Robert Conley tells here a story in a way appropriate to both. It is a skillful blend of past and present, of oral traditions rooted in distant places, and of both Anglo and Cherokee perspectives on what Conley's own ancestors called the Trail of Tears.

Genre: Fiction and Literature - Historical Fiction
Subject: History, Native American, Folklife - Oral Traditions

Cross, George L.
Blacks in White Colleges.
Published: Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1975.
Perhaps the University of Oklahoma's most respected former president, George Lynn Cross, elevated the post-World War II institution from its pervasive mediocrity to two positions of national prominence. The first was as a perennial power in football, the other as the public university at the center of the unfolding legal strategies that culminated in the dismantling of Jim Crow schooling in every state and in every form. Here, his story is the second.

Genre: Nonfiction - Monograph
Subject: History, African American, Politics

Cunningham, William
The Green Corn Rebellion: A Novel.
Published: New York: Vanguard Press, 1935.
The so-called Green Corn Rebellion was a short-lived but deeply revealing spasm of violence that shook Oklahoma's South Canadian River valley just after America's declaration of war in 1917. Though a fictive account, this novel captures the spirit of desperation and revolutionary zeal involved, perhaps because its author was another Oklahoman given to politics of the most radical order, in Cunningham's case the Communist Party.

Genre: Fiction and Literature - Historical Fiction
Subject: Rural Life, Politics

Debo, Angie
Prairie City: The Story of an American Community.
Published: New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1944.
Only the author's absolute integrity puts this book in the category of fiction. Everything that she recounts did, in fact, happen. And everything except one tiny episode happened in her hometown: Marshall, Oklahoma. (That one happened in a neighboring community.) History or novel, Prairie City really is The Story of an American Community - of many communities, in fact.

Genre: Fiction and Literature - Historical Fiction
Subject: History, Rural Life, Folklife - Community Life, Society

Debo, Angie
And Still the Waters Run: The Betrayal of the Five Civilized Tribes.
Indians, Outlaws, and Angie Debo, an early broadcast of Public Broadcasting's
Published: Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1940.
American Experience series, introduced a national audience to this author, until then too long ignored, to this book too long unknown, and to its subject too soon forgotten. The subject is the incredible yet systematic theft of property worth untold millions that had once belonged entirely - and by treaty pledge permanently - to the Indians then-called the Five Civilized Tribes.

Genre: Nonfiction - Monograph
Subject: History, Native American

Debo, Angie
Oklahoma: Foot-Loose and Fancy-Free.
Published: Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1949.
Neither historical survey nor scholarly monograph, this singular book might be described as a very informed impression of Oklahoma and its people. Certain sections are invariably dated now, but no visitor or newcomer will find a more inviting introduction to the state's natural features and most of its history.

Genre: Nonfiction - Monograph
Subject: History, Nature & Environment, Rural Life

England, Gary
Oklahoma Weather.
Published: Oklahoma City: England and May, 1975.
This little paperback surely must include everything that the lay reader might care to know about the subject that so many Oklahomans talk about but so few understand and none can change. Packed with graphs, charts, tables, and a glossary of technical terms, it also includes information of special interest to sportsmen, aviators, and gardeners. Nor surprisingly, its section on tornados has a special importance.

Genre: Nonfiction - Monograph
Subject: Nature & Environment, Hobbies

Dunbar-Ortiz, Roxanne
Red Dirt Country: Growing Up Okie.
Published: London and New York: Verso, 1997.
This book's author is a leading voice of contemporary feminism, and hers is a thoroughly American story of what it means to have grown up poor and marginalized in an isolated, backwater village (here, Piedmont, Oklahoma), then to discover a much larger outside world. The greatest discovery, though, is of a legacy from small-town Oklahoma richer than she had ever imagined.

Genre: Nonfiction - Diary/Memoir/Autobiography
Subject: Rural Life, Gender

Fall, Thomas
The Ordeal of Running Standing.
Published: New York: McCall Publishing Co., 1970.
Set in Oklahoma's reservations as they are being dissolved, this novel's central figure is a young Kiowa, Running Standing to his people, Joe Standing to their conquerors. Significantly, the ultimate conquest occurs not on battlefields but in classrooms, those at Carlisle Indian School to be exact. Tracing one character's personal ordeal, the book explores both the process and the limits of that conquest.

Genre: Fiction and Literature - Historical Fiction
Subject: History, Native American

Fisher, Ada Lois Sipuel with Danney Goble.
A Matter of Black and White: The Autobiography of Ada Lois Sipuel Fisher.
Published: Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1996.
To legal scholars and constitutional historians, Ada Lois Sipuel is simply the name of the plaintiff in one the most significant legal battles in the past century, one that was a turning point in the long struggle to end Jim Crow schooling. Her autobiography - at times moving, at times funny, always compelling - gives both flesh and soul to that name.

Genre: Nonfiction - Diary/Memoir/Autobiography
Subject: History, African American, Politics
Purchase online from publisher.

Fitzgerald, David
Oklahoma. Rev. ed.
Published: Portland, Oregon: Graphic Arts Center Publishing Company, 1989.
Both of these marvelous books should be considered together; neither should be overlooked. Fitzgerald's full-color photographs, especially presented so beautifully, provide a stunning introduction to the diversity and beauty that is Oklahoma. In the second book, George Nigh's text adds to the photographs' visual power because it reflects the heart and thoughts of one of Oklahoma's most devoted and beloved state leaders.

Genre: Nonfiction - Monograph
Subject: Photography, Nature & Environment

Fitzgerald, David with George Nigh.
Oklahoma II.
Published: Portland, Oregon: Graphic Arts Center Publishing Company, 1994.
Both of these marvelous books should be considered together; neither should be overlooked. Fitzgerald's full-color photographs, especially presented so beautifully, provide a stunning introduction to the diversity and beauty that is Oklahoma. In the second book, George Nigh's text adds to the photographs' visual power because it reflects the heart and thoughts of one of Oklahoma's most devoted and beloved state leaders.

Genre: Nonfiction - Monograph
Subject: Photography, Nature & Environment

Franklin, Jimmie Lewis
Journey Toward Hope: A History of Blacks in Oklahoma.
Published: Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1986.
Without question the best introduction to the difficult history that blacks both made and endured in Oklahoma, this book is particularly notable for its sensitivity to just how and why that history has been so diverse. Other special strengths are its coverage of black institutions and of black-led efforts to integrate those institutions into the wider society while also preserving as much of their autonomy as possible.

Genre: Nonfiction - Monograph
Subject: History, African American, Society

Franklin, John Hope and John Whittington Franklin, eds.
My Life and Era: The Autobiography of Buck Colbert Franklin.
Published: Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press: 1998.
B. C. Franklin, John Hope Franklin, John Whittington Franklin - three names, three generations brought together in this singular project. The first was a Tulsa attorney, without whom the history of black Oklahomans, though poor, would have been poorer still. The second is his son, who arrived in Tulsa amid the rubble of the 1921 race riot and left it to earn a Harvard doctorate and launch a distinguished academic career. The third was born to very different circumstances yet was indebted first to his grandfather, who, though born of one-time slaves, rose to champion so many.

Genre: Nonfiction - Diary/Memoir/Autobiography
Subject: History, African American

Franks, Kenny
The Oklahoma Petroleum Industry.
Published: Norman: Published for the Oklahoma Heritage Association by the University of Oklahoma Press, 1980.
No other work examines with such broadness or with such detail what oil has meant to Oklahoma, particularly between the 1880s and 1940s. The organization is both chronological and geographical, since it moves from one booming oil field to another. Along the way, it introduces readers to everything from the most innovative oilfield technologies to the most colorful of the low lives and high jinks to be found in Oklahoma's oil days.

Genre: Nonfiction - Monograph
Subject: History, Nature & Environment

Gates, Eddie Faye
They Came Searching: How Blacks Sought the Promised Land in Tulsa.
Published: Austin: Eakin Press, 1997.
Long and deeply immersed in the history of Tulsa's blacks and their community, the author has produced a singular book that is as much biographical as it is historical. The reason is that it interweaves intensely personal oral histories with thoroughly researched social analysis.

Genre: Nonfiction - Monograph
Subject: History, African American, Folklife - Oral Traditions, Folklife - Community Life, Urban Life

Gilbert, Claudette Marie and Robert L. Brooks.
From Mounds to Mammoths: A Field Guide to Oklahoma Prehistory. 2nd ed.
Published: Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2000.
Covering the approximately 30,000 years of prehistory that ended with the arrival of Europeans, this book is organized chronologically. Each chapter must take in large chunks of time, but the level of detail to be found in each is as surprising as it is fascinating. This is especially the case with this edition, for it draws upon the considerable archeological work done in Oklahoma since 1980, when the book first appeared.

Genre: Nonfiction - Monograph
Subject: History, Native American, Cultural/Human Geography

Glancy, Diane
The Mask Maker: A Novel.
Published: Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2003.
Edith Lewis, this novel's central character, is a recently divorced, mixed-blood American Indian who travels across contemporary Oklahoma. Moving from school to school, she teaches the art and customs of traditional mask-making; and as she follows that path she learns as much - maybe more - than she teaches.

Genre: Fiction and Literature - Novel
Subject: Native American
Purchase online from publisher.

Goble, Danney
Tulsa! Biography of the American City.
Published: Tulsa: Council Oak Books, 1998.
Lavishly illustrated and handsomely produced, this is the history commissioned to celebrate Tulsa's first century as an incorporated city. Its story is no mere celebratory puff-piece, however. It is the story, warts and all, of what Tulsans were doing over those hundred years, sometimes doing for themselves, sometimes doing unto others.

Genre: Nonfiction - Monograph
Subject: History, Urban Life

Gregory, Robert
Oil in Oklahoma.
Published: Muskogee: Leake Industries, 1976.
This is the byproduct of the finest documentary series ever produced in Oklahoma. Then vice-president for Tulsa's KTUL-TV, Bob Gregory both told and showed what oil has wrought in Oklahoma, and the station's ownership then produced this more permanent form. The text is essentially the series narrative, and the illustrations are some of the best of its still-photos.

Genre: Nonfiction - Monograph
Subject: History, Photography

Griffis, Molly Levite
The Rachel Resistance.
Published: Austin: Eakin Press, 2001.
Because the town of its fictional setting is presented numbers fewer than two thousand and because the one who carries its story is a mere fifth-grader, one might expect little of this tale of Pearl Harbor and its aftermath. Its rewards, however, exceed such expectations. That is because it turns a deceptively simple tale into some very deep reflections upon very big subjects.

Genre: Fiction and Literature - Historical Fiction
Subject: History, Society

Guthrie, Woody. Introduction by Studs Terkel.
Bound for Glory.
Published: New York: E. P. Dutton, 1976.
This may be the most charming book ever written about an Oklahoman or by an Oklahoman, especially when the two are one. Generations of Americans have come to know and love Woody Guthrie for his music. As great and as moving as his best songs are, this remarkable memoir may be even greater and more moving.

Genre: Nonfiction - Diary/Memoir/Autobiography
Subject: Folklife - Music

Hagan, William Thomas
Quanah Parker, Comanche Chief. The Oklahoma Western Biographies Series.
Published: Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1993.
Few Plains Indians have been as famous or remain as controversial as the one his father's people called Quanah. The Parker of his name came from Cynthia Ann Parker, captured as a child and raised to become the wife of one Comanche warrior (Poco Nocono) and mother of another: Quanah. No less complicated was her son's life once the Comanche's warrior days ended. Though concise, Hagan's biography embraces all of that complexity.

Genre: Nonfiction - Biography
Subject: Native American
Purchase online from publisher.

Hassrick, Peter H.
Treasures of the Old West: Paintings and Sculpture from the Thomas Gilcrease Institute of American History and Art.
Published: New York: Abrams, 1984.
What Tulsans informally call the Gilcrease Museum has a singular history. Originally accumulated by oilman Thomas Gilcrease, its incomparable treasures were later purchased by the City of Tulsa, thereby saving Gilcrease from ruin and giving Tulsans an incomparable collection of American art and artifacts. This book, originally prepared for an exhibit lent other galleries, presents some of the best of the art of the American West to be found anywhere.

Genre: Nonfiction - Monograph
Subject: Art

Henderson, Arn, Frank Parman, and Dortha Henderson.
Architecture in Oklahoma: Landmark and Vernacular.
Published: Norman: Point Riders Press, 1978.
Forever home to many peoples, key moments in Oklahoma's history - particularly in its economic history - happened to coincide with significant changes in architecture. Moreover, architects as significant as Frank Lloyd Wright, Bruce Goff, Solomon Layman, and Herb Green have left their notable marks upon the state. The book includes a valuable selective bibliography.

Genre: Nonfiction - Monograph
Subject: History, Architecture/Design

Henderson, Caroline. Edited by Alvin O. Turner.
Letters from the Dust Bowl.
Published: Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2003.
Caroline Henderson's articles, first-person accounts of life in the heart of the Dust Bowl, first appeared in Atlantic Monthly in 1931; and they have long been admired as much for their eloquence as for their realism. For this edition, Alvin O. Turner has reproduced all of Henderson's original public writings and considerably enriched them with new materials drawn from her personal correspondence.

Genre: Nonfiction - Diary/Memoir/Autobiography
Subject: History, Rural Life, European American
Purchase online from publisher.

Hesse, Karen
Out of the Dust.
Published: New York: Scholastic Press, 1999.
Each entry a sparse, free-verse poem, this book presents itself as the journal of a fourteen-year-old living amid the ravages of Oklahoma's famed Dust Bowl. In Billie Jo's (the narrator's) case, the tragedies are as much internal and emotional as they are social and economic. However mournful - and realistic - its story line, the book steadily maintains an ember of hope and of truth: that the strongest of howling winds produce grit.

Genre: Nonfiction - Diary/Memoir/Autobiography
Subject: Poetry, Historical Fiction, Rural Life, Folklife - Community Life

Hinton, S. E.
The Outsiders.
Published: New York: Viking Press, 1967.
Even had Francis Ford Coppola not turned it into a motion picture, S. E. Hinton's novel still could lay claim to being the outstanding piece of young-adult fiction ever set in Oklahoma. What makes it remarkable is that its author (Susie Hinton) began it as a high school sophomore, worked on it through her junior year, and signed the contract to publish on her graduation day from Tulsa's Will Rogers High School.

Genre: Fiction and Literature - Novel
Subject: Urban Life

Hirsch, James S.
Riot and Remembrance: The Tulsa Race War and Its Legacy.
Published: Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2002.
A forbidden subject for decades, Tulsa's 1921 racial bloodletting has recently become the subject of several books, some better than others but none quite like this one. The reason is that the author is concerned equally with two related yet ultimately different things. The first involves what happened (and why) during a few horrible hours in a Tulsa of long ago. The second ponders how Tulsans, both black and white, have so differently remembered and understood what happened. In this telling, those differences are at least as revealing as the event itself.

Genre: Nonfiction - Monograph
Subject: History, African American, European American, Urban Life

Hunt, David C.
The Lithographs of Charles Banks Wilson
Published: Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1989.
Few would dispute that Charles Banks Wilson is Oklahoma's best known and most successful living artist. His oil paintings or prints made of them have appeared everywhere from the inner rotunda of the state capitol to the covers of Southwestern Bell telephone books. Lithography is another of his favorite forms, and this handsome 270-page book reproduces some of the best that the process has yielded.

Genre: Nonfiction - Monograph
Subject: Art
Purchase online from publisher.

James, Marquis
The Cherokee Strip: A Tale of an Oklahoma Boyhood.
Published: New York: Viking Press, 1945.
Later honored as a biographer, journalist, and recipient of two Pulitzer prizes, the author came to a rural claim staked by his father in the Cherokee Strip, in 1893. Much of his growing-up years were spent in the area's one "city" of any size, Enid, where his father had been so determined to erect the community's first two-story residence that he threw one up without a connecting stairway. That and other tales make their way into an account that manages to be both utterly incredible and perfectly believable.

Genre: Nonfiction - Diary/Memoir/Autobiography
Subject: Rural Life, Folklife - Community Life

Keith, Harold
Rifles for Watie.
Published: New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1957.
There was a time in which every Oklahoma schoolchild learned that the last Confederate general to surrender was the Cherokee Stand Watie - a "fact" that however pointless was thought to convey great importance to the state's history. General Watie and his doomed Cause provide the backdrop for this first-rate young reader's introduction to Oklahoma's own Civil War, one that added homegrown tragedies.

Genre: Fiction and Literature - Children's Literature
Subject: History, Native American, Military

Keith, Harold. Foreword by Barry Tramel.
Forty-seven Straight: The Wilkinson Era at Oklahoma.
Published: Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2003.
The number forty-seven, the name Bud Wilkinson, and the University of Oklahoma share a meaning for anyone with a passion for football. Forty-seven was the still-unapproachable number of consecutive victories that Bud Wilkinson earned while coaching the OU Sooners between 1953 and 1957. Writing as the university's long-time director of sports information, Harold Keith has enriched this account with the reflections of sixty-one men who played during that streak.

Genre: Nonfiction - Monograph
Subject: History, Sports & Leisure

Kimball, Yeffe and Jean Anderson. Foreword by Will Rogers, Jr.
The Art of American Indian Cooking.
Published: Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1965.
Although its reach extends beyond Oklahoma, this book is well-matched to the state that eventually become home to so many tribes from so much of America; and its presentations say as much about traditional cultures as they do traditional cooking. Finally, its recipes are adapted to what is at hand in today's kitchens and markets.

Genre: Nonfiction - Reference
Subject: Native American, Folklife - Cuisine

Klein, Joe
Woody Guthrie: A Life.
Published: New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1982.
Between stints first as entertainment columnist for Rolling Stone and political reporter for The New Yorker Joe Klein encountered the story of a man he then knew only as Arlo Guthrie's father, Woody. With full access to the memories and correspondence of Marjorie Guthrie, Arlo's mother and Woody's widow, Klein went on to produce this first-rate biography of the singer/writer who was half-man, half-legend, and all Oklahoman.

Genre: Nonfiction - Biography
Subject: Folklife - Music, Rural Life

Lanham, Edwin. Introduction by Lawrence R. Rogers.
The Stricklands: A Novel.
Published: Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2004.
Originally published in 1939, this is the story of two brothers, both tenant farmers, each faced with losing his faint grip upon his land in 1930s Oklahoma. No novel ‑ not even John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath - so starkly or so movingly captures the gritty reality of life in rural Depression-era Oklahoma.

Genre: Fiction and Literature - Historical Fiction
Subject: History, Rural Life
Purchase online from publisher.

Lafferty, R. A.
Okla Hannali.
Published: Garden City, New Jersey: Doubleday, 1972.
Primarily known for science fiction, the author here turns to historical fiction, with a short work that encompasses most of the nineteenth century. He tells it as the fictional life of Innominee, a Choctaw of the Okla Hannali clan, and witness to everything from the tribe's removal, to Oklahoma's statehood. His Innominee is a fully developed character with a personality as memorable as any experiences.

Genre: Fiction and Literature - Historical Fiction
Subject: History, Native American

Letts, Billie
Where the Heart Is.
Published: New York: Warner Books, 1995.
Even before its selection for Oprah Winfrey's Book Club multiplied its readers exponentially, this novel enjoyed an appreciative if considerably smaller audience. Beginning when seventeen-year-old Novalee Nation, seven months and seven days pregnant, with just $7.77 to her name, finds herself abandoned at an Oklahoma Wal-Mart, the novel that unfolds is light enough, precious enough, and profound enough to serve as a modern American fairy tale.

Genre: Fiction and Literature - Novel
Subject: Gender

Linenthal, Edward T.
The Unfinished Bombing: Oklahoma City in American Memory.
Published: New York: Oxford University Press, 2001.
Until the horror of nine-eleven, no comparable event had so shaken and disturbed so many as the bombing of Oklahoma City's Murrah Building. Befitting a scholar whose previous work involves the commemoration of the Holocaust and the Smithsonian Institution's star-crossed attempt to mount an exhibit on the Enola Gay, this study only briefly addresses what happened in a few terrible minutes in a single American city. Instead, it ponders the many ways that Americans have struggled to understand what happened.

Genre: Nonfiction - Monograph
Subject: History, Politics, Society

Mankiller, Wilma and Michael Wallis.
Mankiller: A Chief and Her People.
Published: New York: St. Martin's Griffin, 1993.
The first woman elected chief of a major tribe, Wilma Mankiller may have achieved initial notice with that striking last name, but her eventual importance transcends any accidents of surname, perhaps even of gender. Written with Michael Wallis, her story is part-memoir, part-history, and part-reflection upon what it means to be female and Indian and human in modern America.

Genre: Nonfiction - Biography
Subject: History, Native American, Gender

Marriott, Alice
The Ten Grandmothers.
Published: Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1945.
Structured around thirty-three stories covering the years between 1847 and 1944, this book takes its title from the ten medicine bundles that the Kiowa have traditionally considered sacred. Following just a few Kiowa families through all those years, it captures both the language and the spirit of those families, the author's principal sources.

Genre: Nonfiction - Monograph
Subject: History, Native American, Folklife - Oral Traditions, Religion & Spirituality
Purchase online from publisher.

Marsh, Ralph, in collaboration with Gene Stipe.
A Gathering of Heroes.
Published: Heavener, Oklahoma: Spring Mountain Press, 2000.
Years before surrendering his state senate seat in the wake of certain campaign irregularities, McAlester's Gene Stipe already had earned the honor of being the planet's longest-serving elected lawmaker (ever). He also had acquired the reputation of being Oklahoma's "Prince of Darkness," a title assigned him in a New Yorker and accepted with pride. This is his story told his way, a way that includes stories of others who from the hills of Oklahoma's Little Dixie to refashion an entire state in their image.

Genre: Nonfiction - Diary/Memoir/Autobiography
Subject: History, Politics

Mathews, John Joseph
The Osages: Children of the Middle Waters.
Published: Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1961.
As much epic as history, this very long book devotes itself to the Indians that called themselves the Little Ones. Others - Native Americans and everyone else, too - had no illusions about their stature, however. Fierce and proud, the Osage have lived in Oklahoma longer than any other peoples; and the tribe's history is in many ways the state's history. Mathews tells it thoroughly and sympathetically, even poetically.

Genre: Nonfiction - Monograph
Subject: History, Native American

McCoy, Doyle
Roadside Flowers of Oklahoma.
Published: Lawton: C and J Printing Co., 1976.
This handsome and convenient series of field collection booklets for Oklahoma wildflowers combines both text and photographs by a respected authority on the state's native plants. Grouped by flower color, its color photographs are printed against a black background to enhance their detail. The primary focus is upon plants large enough to be seen while driving down Oklahoma's highways.

Genre: Nonfiction - Reference
Subject: Photographs, Nature & Environment, Hobbies

Milburn, George
Catalogue.
Published: New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1936.
All but forgotten now, George Milburn was considered a marvel by his contemporaries, beginning with fellow students at the University of Oklahoma. Even then, his wit and irreverence were so highly barbed and polished that he earned his living as a published writer - published by H. L. Mencken, no less. With Catalogue, Milburn hit the peak of his form with a sometimes hilarious, sometimes cruel depiction that drew (loosely) upon what he had detected and despised in his hometown, Coweta, Oklahoma.

Genre: Fiction and Literature - Novel
Subject: Rural Life

Momaday, N. Scott
Circle of Wonder: A Native American Christmas Story.
Published: Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1999.
A mute Indian boy meets then follows a figure he believes to be his beloved, dead grandfather. Over the course of that journey, the child enters into a circle binding him with all creation in a moment of peace and good will. Such, it appears, is this book's simple story. In Momaday's gifted hands, however, there is nothing at all simple about it.

Genre: Fiction and Literature - Children's Literature
Subject: Native American, Religion & Spirituality

Momaday, N. Scott
The Way to Rainy Mountain.
Published: Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1964.
Honored with a Pulitzer prize for fiction and acclaimed for his mastery of every literary genre from poetry through children's stories, N. Scott Momaday is one thing when doing everything. He is Kiowa. With this book (its title referring to the Oklahoma site held to be the sacred center of the Kiowa universe), he unfolds his people's ancient legends and collective stories with singular talents.

Genre: Fiction and Literature - Short Stories
Subject: Native American, Folklife - Oral Traditions, Religion & Spirituality

Morgan, Anne Hodges and Rennard Strickland.
Oklahoma Memories.
Published: Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1981.
The idea behind this book must have been so obvious that no one thought of it, not until these authors collected a set of stories, all about growing up in Oklahoma. They vary from the oddly curious to the profoundly moving. Among the first are the memories Pearl Mesta, the Washington grand hostess who was raised in an Oklahoma City hotel. Among the latter, none is more powerful than Colonel Robinson Risner's recalling how his own Oklahoma memories sustained him through seven years of imprisonment and torture in North Vietnam.

Genre: Nonfiction - Diary/Memoir/Autobiography
Subject: History, Folklife - Oral Traditions, European American

Morris, John W., ed.
Geography of Oklahoma.
Published: Oklahoma City: Oklahoma Historical Society, 1977.
The work of twelve academic geographers, this collection takes the diversity characteristic of the modern discipline and applies it systematically to Oklahoma. Scarcely any aspect of the state lies beyond the geographers' collective reach; and nearly everything about Oklahoma profits with their examination.

Genre: Nonfiction - Monograph
Subject: Cultural/Human Geography

Morris, John W., Charles R. Goins, and Edwin C. McReynolds, comp.
Historical Atlas of Oklahoma. 3rd ed.
Published: Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1986.
Eighty-three maps, each matched to a contextual essay, cover everything from Oklahoma's geography and prehistory through the distribution of its modern cities and industries. Maps and essays almost always interweave to illustrate and explain what has happened where and why.

Genre: Nonfiction - Reference
Subject: History, Cultural-Human Geography
Purchase online from publisher.

Musselwhite, Lynn and Suzanna Jones Crawford.
One Woman's Political Journey: Kate Barnard and Social Reform, 1875-1930.
Published: Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2003.
Once famous but long forgotten, Kate Barnard, no less than Jane Addams or Florence Kelley was regarded an exemplar of what women could do in the cause of social reform. Oklahomans in 1907 elected her the first woman to occupy any statewide office in any state - the only woman to do that until woman's suffrage was nationally achieved (in 1920). After years of painstaking research and the careful crafting of their prose, these authors make her story one deservedly remembered.

Genre: Nonfiction - Biography
Subject: History, Political History, Gender

Federal Writers' Project of the Works Progress Administration
The WPA Guide to 1930s Oklahoma, compiled by the Writers' Program of the Works Progress Administration. With a restored essay by Angie Debo and a new introduction by Anne Hodges Morgan.
Published: University Press of Kansas, 1986.
Most of this book appeared in 1941 as part of the WPA series of state "Guides," so much of it will be dated, some out-of-date entirely. Nonetheless, the great bulk of it is just as useful now as then, and the single significant difference between the reprint and the original makes it still more valuable. The difference is that the 1941 original substituted an insipid, even ignorant, introduction for the one that Angie Debo had labored to write, without the bother of informing her or even removing her name as its author. Herein "restored," the still-penetrating essay says almost as much about the true Oklahoma as does its censoring.

Genre: Nonfiction - Reference
Subject: History

Padgett, Ron
Oklahoma Tough: My Father, King of the Tulsa Bootleggers.
Published: Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2003.
This book's author is a poet of national reputation. Its subject - the poet's father - enjoyed a reputation neither as widespread nor as respectable. Wayne Padgett's business was bootlegging, and running illegal booze may have been among the least of his crimes.

Genre: Nonfiction - Biography
Subject: History

 
Pasture and Range Plants.
Published: Hayes, Kansas: Fort Hayes State University, 1989.
First published in 1963 by Phillips Petroleum Company, this is an excellent introduction to the identification of prairie plant life. The printing is in a large format, using watercolors against a black background, to identify sixty-seven grasses, thirty-six legumes, and fifty-one forbs significant for grazing animals. A panel of text accompanies each drawing.

Genre: Nonfiction - Reference
Subject: Nature & Environment

Phillips, George R., Frank J. Gibbs, and Wilbur R. Mattoon.
Forest Trees of Oklahoma and How to Know Them.
Published: Oklahoma City: Forestry Division, State Board of Agriculture, 1973.
Field botanists consider this a useful introduction to the identification of Oklahoma's woody species, including its shrubs and vines as well as trees. Each species receives a full-page, which includes line drawings of its leaves and, in some cases, its fruit.

Genre: Nonfiction - Reference
Subject: Nature & Environment

Portis, Charles
True Grit.
Published: New York: Simon and Schuster, 1968.
Intellectuals generally dismiss Western literature as an oxymoron. Add the fact that Hollywood forever identified the novel with John Wayne, and one would be surprised to learn that respected literary critics consider Charles Portis a twentieth century Mark Twain and True Grit his equivalent to Huckleberry Finn. Agree or not, there is no escaping the charm and drama of this mismatched pair's wanderings through the Indian Territory in search of justice and Lucky Ned Pepper.

Genre: Fiction and Literature - Historical Fiction
Subject: History

Posey, Alexander. Edited by Daniel F. Littlefield, Jr., and Carol A. Petty Hunter.
The Fus Fixico Letters: A Creek Humorist in Early Oklahoma.
Published: Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2002.
Alexander Posey was a Creek journalist, poet, and humorist with a national reputation in the late eighteen and early nineteen hundreds. His most enduring literary creation was Fus Fixico, a Native American whose "conversations" with other fictional characters were every bit as humorous - and as insightful - as those of Finley Peter Dunne's famed Irishman, Mr. Dooley.

Genre: Fiction and Literature - Novel
Subject: Native American, Folklife - Oral Traditions/Humor

Rawls, Wilson
Where the Red Fern Grows: The Story of Two Dogs and a Boy.
Published: Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1961.
Well before Hollywood turned it into a "family" film, this simple story of a coon-hunting boy and his two beloved hounds neared perfection as a picture of a time and life that might already have been lost forever. As rustic and archaic as the story might sound, there is something in Wilson Rawl's telling of it that reaches beyond place and time to touch the human heart wherever and whenever it beats.

Genre: Fiction and Literature - Novel
Subject: Rural Life

Red Corn, Charles H.
A Pipe for February: A Novel.
Published: Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2002.
An incredible oil boom in the 1920s briefly made the Osage rich, incredibly rich. With fortune came homicide, most famously a series of murders committed by an intermarried white man whose victims included his wife's Osage relatives. Drawing upon Osage lore, Red Corn writes that story as the Osage have told it.

Genre: Fiction and Literature - Historical Fiction
Subject: History, Native American
Purchase online from publisher.

Reinking, Dan L., ed.
Oklahoma Breeding Bird Atlas.
Published: Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2004.
Drawing upon the work of more than a hundred volunteers and professionals who spent more than five years surveying nearly six hundred sites, this reference work offers a full array of data on both common and rare bird species to be found in Oklahoma. Entries include detailed specie counts and descriptions of plumage, habitat, nesting, eggs, and the young. More than two hundred color photos and maps add immeasurably, both to its ease of use and to its sheer beauty.

Genre: Nonfiction - Reference
Subject: Nature & Environment, Hobbies
Purchase online from publisher.

Revard, Carter
An Eagle Nation.
Published: Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1993.
Paradox may best describe this gifted poet, who was born in Pawhusaka, Oklahoma, raised in Buck Creek Valley, and educated in the community's one-room, eight-grade school. Better things lay ahead, however: a degree from the University of Tulsa, a Rhodes scholarship to Oxford, a doctorate from Yale, and a series of prestigious teaching positions. Considered the most powerful of his poetry collections, An Eagle Nation is also the most personal, for it bears the distinct mark of the poet also known as Nompewathe, his Osage name, given him by his Osage grandmother.

Genre: Fiction and Literature - Poetry
Subject: Native American

Riggs, Lynn
Green Grow the Lilacs: A Play.
Published: New York: S. French, 1930.
Outside of his home state, few are likely to know the name of this writer from then-small Claremore, Oklahoma. Fewer still might recognize this obscure play. But almost everyone is familiar with what happened to this little play when Richard Rogers and Oscar Hammerstein added music and renamed it Oklahoma!

Genre: Fiction and Literature - Play
Subject: History, Society

Ross, Glen
On Coon Mountain: Scenes from a Boyhood in the Oklahoma Hills.
Published: Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992.
Few Oklahoma regions are as well known to state residents as the Cookson Hills. Once part of the Cherokee Nation, life in the hills had scarcely changed when Glen Ross was born near Coon Mountain in 1929. This book's main tale, what it means to have grown up there, is just as captivating as its closing pages, in which Ross contrasts the life he had known to the one he later found.

Genre: Nonfiction - Diary/Memoir/Autobiography
Subject: Native American, Rural Life

Ruth, Kent and Jim Argo. Edited by D. Ray Wilson.
Oklahoma Historical Tour Guide.
Published: Carpentersville, Illinois: Crossroads Communications, 1992.
This book is both written and structured for the historic-minded traveler of Oklahoma. It takes the reader down one highway after another, until crisscrossing the entire state. At each of hundreds of stops along the way, the reader/traveler learns something of the history of this community or that site, often with precise driving directions to reach others lying off the main-traveled roads.

Genre: Nonfiction - Reference
Subject: Travel, History, Rural Life

Rutland, Robert Allen
Boyhood in the Dust Bowl, 1926-1934.
Published: Niwot, Colorado: University Press of Colorado, 1995.
In academic circles, the author is known either as the scholar who edited several volumes of James Madison's papers or as the historian who wrote the definitive history concerning the Bill of Rights. Those who met Bob Rutland in this book, however, likely will leave it oblivious to any of that but fascinated by his ability to tell a tale able to capture the hearts of both the young and the not-so-young.

Genre: Nonfiction - Diary/Memoir/Autobiography
Subject: History

Scales, James Ralph and Danney Goble.
Oklahoma Politics: A History.
Published: Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1982.
Covering essentially the period that opened with Oklahoma's statehood, in 1907, and ran into the 1970s, this is a thorough history of what, in Oklahoma, is as much a rough-and-tumble sport as it is policy-making. The organization is primarily by gubernatorial elections and administrations, but Oklahoma's place in national politics receives due attention.

Genre: Nonfiction - Monograph
Subject: History, Politics

Shirk, George H.
Oklahoma Place Names.
Published: Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1965.
This classic reference work will have special value to newcomers to the state and to those who travel through it, in fact to anyone who wonders "Where did they come up with that name?" Starting with every Oklahoma community that once maintained a post office and including all seventy-seven counties as well as virtually every stream and mountain in the state, this book almost always gives the answer.

Genre: Nonfiction - Reference
Subject: Travel, History
Purchase online from publisher.

Shirley, Glenn
Law West of Fort Smith: A History of Frontier Justice in Indian Territory; andWest of Hell's Fringe: Crime, Criminals, and the Federal Peace Officer in Oklahoma Territory, 1889-1907.
Published: Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1978.
More than common authorship and similarity of titles makes these books a natural pair. Covering only the old Indian Territory - essentially modern Oklahoma's eastern half - the first concentrates on the justice side, especially the justice meted out by the famed "Hanging Judge" Isaac Parker. The second covers modern Oklahoma's western portions, those once collectively called Oklahoma Territory, and its emphasis is the opposite: upon the criminals and gangs that so badly tested any notion of justice.

Genre: Nonfiction - Monograph
Subject: History

Singer, Mark
Funny Money.
Published: New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1985.
When one year's oil boom turned into another year's oil bust, the first casualties included an undistinguished little bank set down in the parking lot of an Oklahoma City shopping center. But the collapse of Penn Square Bank proved to be the first domino to fall in a long chain that nearly toppled the nation's entire banking industry. This eminently readable account explains how and why that could happen.

Genre: Nonfiction - Monograph
Subject: History

Smith, Annick, Photographs by Harvey Payne.
Big Bluestem: A Journey into the Tall Grass.
Published: Tulsa: Council Oak Books, 1996.
Beautifully illustrated and handsomely presented, this may be as much a work of history and sociology as it is of ecology. The subject is 37,500 acres of stunning prairie land that lie near Pawhuska, in Osage county, Oklahoma. Moreover, its story is the fate of what had been Osage hunting lands then part of the sprawling Chapman-Barnard Ranch before becoming owned and operated by the Nature Conservancy and called the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve.

Genre: Nonfiction - Monograph
Subject: History, Nature & Environment

Stanley, Jerry
Children of the Dust Bowl: The True Story of the Weedpatch Camp.
Published: New York: Crown, 1992.
The book is about Oklahomans-in-exile, the most vulnerable ones at that. It tells of migrant children called Okies, of what they and their families had left behind, and of the world they, themselves, had to build. It is written for today's children of the sixth grade and up, and those who read it will learn just how resourceful and how brave children can be.

Genre: Nonfiction - Monograph
Subject: History, Society

Steinbeck, John
The Grapes of Wrath.
Published: New York: Viking Press, 1939.
Easily the book most often associated with Oklahoma, this also is the book most likely to cause some Oklahomans to insist that it was written by a non-Oklahoman, who had never as much as visited Oklahoma and who obviously knew nothing about Oklahoma. That such passion persists bespeaks its importance, but Steinbeck's insights make it a masterpiece.

Genre: Fiction and Literature - Historical Fiction
Subject: Rural Life

Stewart, Roy P.
Born Grown: An Oklahoma City History.
Published: Oklahoma City: Fidelity Bank, 1974.
This is a journalistic history of Oklahoma's capital city, starting before it was the capital, before it was a city, before it even existed. Within minutes of high noon, April 22, 1889, it did exist, though, having been "born grown." Oklahoma City's passages through its awkward years and into maturity complete the tale.

Genre: Nonfiction - Monograph
Subject: History, Urban Life

Strickland, Rennard
The Indians in Oklahoma.
Published: Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1980.
Prepared to be one of ten short histories of ten Oklahoma ethnic groups, this volume stands alone, and the reason transcends even the importance of this particular group. Because he sees history as the act of remembrance, the author weaves into his scholarly account innumerable examples of Indian poetry, painting, prose, and countless artifacts. This history of Oklahoma's Indians thus becomes, in its own right, a piece of Indian culture.

Genre: Nonfiction - Monograph
Subject: History, Culture, Native American
Purchase online from publisher.

Sutton, George Miksch
Fifty Common Birds of Oklahoma and the Southern Great Plains.
Published: Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1977.
This is a personal work done by the ornithologist famed (in some circles) for his Oklahoma Birds: Their Ecology and Distribution, with Comments on the Avifauna of the Southern Plains. Those of plainer bent will appreciate much more the fifty beautiful illustrations and Dr. Sutton's almost chatty account of each species, including its favored habitat and characteristic nests, eggs, and songs.

Genre: Nonfiction - Reference
Subject: Nature & Environment, Hobbies
Purchase online from publisher.

Switzer, Barry with Bud Shrake.
Bootlegger's Boy.
Published: New York: W. Morrow, 1990.
Between 1973 and 1989 Barry Switzer gave the University of Oklahoma a football program known almost as well for its indiscretions off the field as for its success on it. Three national championships, a small army of All-Americans, almost routine conference championships - these were parts of Switzer's legacy. In this remarkably frank autobiography, Switzer talks candidly about all that and about a lot more.

Genre: Nonfiction - Diary/Memoir/Autobiography
Subject: Sports & Leisure

Thomas, Joyce Carol
Marked by Fire.
Published: New York: Avon Books, 1982.
Born in Ponca City, Oklahoma, Joyce Carol Thomas left for an upbringing in California when she was ten. It is to Oklahoma that she so often returns, however, and her stories resonant with Oklahoma language, Oklahoma rhythms, and Oklahoma sensibility. None do that better than this tale of Abyssinian Jackson and of a life in which romance and remorse interact with loss and hope.

Genre: Fiction and Literature - Novel
Subject: African American, Folklife - Community Life

Tiger, Peggy and Molly Babcock.
The Life and Art of Jerome Tiger: War to Peace, Death to Life.
Published: Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1980.
Although just twenty-six when his life ended in a gun accident, Jerome Tiger is famed for a style of painting that earlier Native Americans had developed and he perfected. Clean and uncluttered, their fine lines and exquisite colors seem to flow together and suggest both movement and emotion. With its a compelling text and full-color illustrations, this beautiful book reveals the visual effects, but it can only hint at the inner genius behind them.

Genre: Nonfiction - Monograph
Subject: Native American, Art

Tyrl, Ronald J., Terrence G. Birdwell, and Ronald E. Masters, illus. by Bellamy Parks Jansen.
Field Guide to Oklahoma Plants: Commonly Encountered Prairie, Shrubland, and Forest Species.
Published: Stillwater: Department of Plant and Soil Science, Oklahoma State University, 2002.
Equally superior for its written descriptions and its accompanying line drawings, this field guide identifies 203 species of plants commonly found in Oklahoma, with an emphasis upon the non-woody types. For each species, the authors systematically provide critical diagnostic characteristics; other plants with which it is commonly confused; both former and current names commonly in use; and extended remarks that typically touching upon the plant's regional distribution, ecology, economic significance, and importance to wildlife.

Genre: Nonfiction - Reference
Subject: Nature & Environment, Hobbies

Van Riper, Guernsey
Will Rogers: Young Cowboy. Childhood of Famous Americans Series.
Published: Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merril, 1951.
One of Oklahoma's two choices for the Capitol's Statuary Hall (Sequoyah is the other), Will Rogers mastered every form of entertainment in his day. Young readers today will find his life as a boy - a boy who was both cowboy and Indian - just as entertaining now.

Genre: Nonfiction - Biography
Subject: History

Wallis, Michael
The Real Wild West: The 101 Ranch and the Creation of the American West.
Published: New York: St. Martin's Press, 1999.
Although it covered some 100,000 acres and styled itself the nation's largest integrated agricultural operation, the 101 Ranch was best known neither for its size nor for its husbandry but for its road show, a spectacle of cowboy daring-do that toured the globe, leaving behind what many came to believe was "real" about the "wild west." This book shows that what was real about the 101, itself, was at least as romantic and maybe just as wild as any show it produced.

Genre: Nonfiction - Monograph
Subject: History

Wallis, Michael
Pretty Boy: The Life and Times of Charles Arthur Floyd.
Published: New York: St. Martin's Press, 1992.
With the possible exception of Alfalfa Bill Murray and the obvious exception of Will Rogers, no one was more identified with Oklahoma in the 1930s than Pretty Boy Floyd. Although it painstakingly leads readers through the short life that began in the hills of eastern Oklahoma and ended in a hail of gunfire from the F.B.I., this book's real worth involves what appears along the way ‑ an entire culture, one vast enough, thick enough, and complex enough to produce Pretty Boy Floyd and a lot more as well.

Genre: Nonfiction - Biography
Subject: History, Society

Worster, Donald
Dust Bowl: The Southern Great Plains in the 1930s.
Published: New York: Oxford University Press, 1979.
Written from an ecological perspective, this account of the famous 1930s disaster probes beneath the howling wind and churning dust and examines the mix of geography and culture that briefly turned portions of western Oklahoma into a Dust Bowl. Its conclusion that a fragile environment simply could not (and cannot) tolerate the unrestrained drive to turn nature into profit likely will be preposterous to some, unsettling to others, and obvious to many.

Genre: Nonfiction - Monograph
Subject: History, Nature & Environment, Rural Life

Wright, Muriel H.
A Guide to the Indian Tribes of Oklahoma.
Published: Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1951.
This reference work is the indispensable introduction to the sixty-seven Indians tribes that have found homes in Oklahoma. Some receive more coverage than others, but the basic and essential information is available for all, including each tribe's origins, history, customs, government, and present location.

Genre: Nonfiction - Reference
Subject: History, Native American, Cultural/Human Geography

Wycoff, Lydia L., ed.
Visions and Voices: Native American Painting from the Philbrook Museum of Art.
Published: Tulsa: Philbrook Museum of Art; distributed by University of New Mexico Press, 1996.
Although known primarily for its holdings of European art, Tulsa's Philbrook Museum also has collected the art of American Indians. This book's 304 pages present much of that art, many represented in full-color. Accompanying essays survey the history of Native American paintings and explore the unique role that tiny Bacone College has played in Indian art over the twentieth century.

Genre: Nonfiction - Monograph
Subject: Native American, Art

Yagoda, Ben
Will Rogers: A Biography.
Published: New York: Knopf, 1993.
If largely unknown to recent generations, Will Rogers was for many of their ancestors the personification of all that was best about Oklahoma - not least for his sense of humor and proportion. Yagoda's book, a full-life biography of this larger-than-life figure, manages to pull Rogers out of the past and set him squarely before the most contemporary of audiences.

Genre: Nonfiction - Biography
Subject: History, European American